Three Ways of Knowing and Changing
Reality byCynthia
Sue Larson August 8,
2000
I woke up this morning and felt really awake. I
knew I wasn't dreaming any more, because I could feel the cotton sheets on
my bed as my legs stretched under the covers. I thought about several
things I wanted to do today, and felt my heart's longing to see my sleeping
daughters before they woke up. I jumped out of bed, pulled open my window
shade, and danced down the hall to give my daughters kisses and hugs in the
early morning sunlight as I began my day.
How can I tell which parts of my waking experience are real? My dictionary
defines real as "true", "actual, rather than imaginary", "genuine", and
"authentic". The physical sensations, intellectual thoughts, and emotional
feelings I experienced when I awoke this morning all felt equally real to
me.
While you'll probably agree with me that physical sensations and actions
are real, you might feel more hesitant to agree that thoughts and feelings
are real. After all, we can't measure them or know for sure how they
affect the world. Part of the reason for this is that consciousness
necessarily runs into some trouble when it encounters itself -- when we
contemplate the nature of consciousness, we question the nature of reality
to its very core.
Mystics know that there is a deeper level of reality than meets the eye...
that there is much more than just the physical world of our senses. This
other way of knowing goes beyond anything we can touch, taste, smell, hear,
or see. This other way of knowing has been described by mystic Rohit
Mehta:
"There are indeed fundamentally two categories of knowledge -- Knowledge by
Ideation and Knowledge by Being. All scientific knowledge, whether
physical or super-physical, belongs to the first category. Such knowledge
is based on the duality of the observer and observed. In spiritual
perception, however, there is Knowledge by Being -- it arises in that state
where the duality of the observer and the observed has vanished. This is
the very core of direct or what is otherwise called the Mystical
experience."
Even though most people don't slip easily into the mystical
realm of awareness, all of us change the world with our thoughts and
feelings as well as with our physical actions. Let's take a look at how
this happens by considering how real our actions, thoughts and feelings
are. Do they affect anything? If so, how do they change the world?
Physical What We Do Changes the
World
Few people would argue with the premise that actions are
real, or that physical movements have physical effects. The field of
classical physics describes laws governing the movements of physical
bodies, and we intuitively recognize the truth in these laws. We know that
a ball's movement stops when we catch it, and that a ball sitting on the
floor will most likely continue to sit in the same spot on the floor --
unless someone or something disturbs it.
We feel certain that "a body at rest remains at rest", that "for every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction", and that "an external
force acting on a body gives it an acceleration that is in the direction of
the force and has a magnitude directly proportional to the magnitude of the
force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body (F=ma)". Ever
since Sir Isaac Newton defined these three laws of motion for us, they have
become the basis from which we view the world around us.
Intellectual What We Think Changes the
World
In the last hundred years, the study of physics has moved
from the realm of the purely physical into the realm of how our
observations affect the reality we are attempting to measure. As
physicists searched for the "fundamental particle", they found tinier and
tinier building blocks from which every known physical thing in the
universe is formed. Molecules contained atoms, which contained electrons
and protons and neutrons, which in turn contained subatomic particles. The
very tiniest particles were discovered to behave in very non-particle
ways... moving more like waves on the ocean than tiny balls moving in
straight lines.
Early experiments with photons traveling through slits in screens showed
that quantum particles behave as if they "know" when they are being
observed... only appearing in physical form when they are being measured
physically, and otherwise traveling as waves (not particles). Alain
Aspect's series of experiments in Paris in the early 1980's proved that
"spooky action at a distance" in which a scientist's observation of a
photon affects the behavior of a photon's partner, even across great
distances.
What laws of motion pertain to thought? If we consider that even photons
are conscious, each act of observation can be considered to be an
intellectual "force" affecting what is being observed. Every observation
"pops" a quantum wave function, resulting in some observable physical
outcome. Our thoughts have physically discernible effects that can be seen
and measured, and quantum physics has opened the door to a greater
understanding of how this happens.
Emotional What We Feel Changes the
World
Medical researchers are the front-runners in today's quest
to discover how feelings change the world. Several recent journal articles
show physical evidence of the tremendous effects that our emotions have on
our physical health and well-being. While anecdotal evidence has existed
for centuries that love heals, some courageous medical researchers are now
venturing forward to share the amazing results of their double-blind,
reproducible experiments indicating ways in which prayer and feeling loved
and loving results in tremendous health benefits.
We instinctively know that this is true... we can feel the way our world
seems brighter when we change our attitude from despair to hope, from
complaint to appreciation, from doubt to confidence, and from fear to love.
Even when things seem to be going terribly awry... perhaps especially at
those times... we can most afford to be our kindest, most compassionate
selves.
